Odili Donald Odita’s paintings speak of ‘double-ness’

Odili Donald Odita’s hard-edged abstract paintings at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston are so beautiful it’s tempting to revel in their intersecting shapes and shards of color and leave it at that.

But more is going on than Odita’s formal prowess, which calls to mind modernist forebears like Ellsworth Kelly and Gene Davis, among others. Odita’s work falls into what CAMH curator Valerie Cassel Oliver describes as “the trajectory of a new abstractionism — one that reflects a global landscape and our contemporary existence.”

Odita, who was born in Nigeria; raised in Columbus, Ohio; and now teaches at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, has told Cassel Oliver his paintings address “notions of ‘double-ness’ — of being aware of multiple perspectives in vision and experience.”

“I utilize this notion of ‘double-ness’ to speak to the very real fact of how I grew up — with one foot in Nigeria, via the bubble provided by my parents at home, and the other foot in a middle-class American educational and social system,” he says.

Additionally, while Odita’s installation of nine paintings — five on canvas, four on Plexiglas — responds masterfully to the architecture of CAMH’s downstairs gallery, it’s also arranged with a narrative in mind, that of “a protagonist who has to come to terms with two different spaces (America and Africa) and navigate between them,” he says.

The details of that story don’t necessarily come across, but Odita’s titles are just evocative enough to give viewers’ imaginations a nudge. Looking at the gorgeous cold blues and warm reds of the kaleidoscopic Night’s Door, you might not catch what Odita describes as his “allusion to the ‘Door of No Return’ where Africans embarked as slaves from Goree Island (in Senegal) for the New World.” I sure didn’t, but I was able to join Odita in seeing “the red space as a door or an opening into another space. It could be a door into oneself or a completely new place altogether.”

Another knockout, Brave Men Run, suggests a conflict-riddled landscape, perhaps set in a region where mountains and desert meet. Its interlocking forms crackle with a nervous tension underscored by the ironic title.

If Odita’s work leaves you wanting to know more, it’s worth picking up the pamphlet-size catalog to read his interview with Cassel Oliver, if only to unpack the many references and associations that find their way into his work.

Another, unexpected benefit is that the black-and-white reproductions — hence the mere $2 price tag — help you appreciate how Odita’s compositions work without the benefit of color, which he undeniably handles brilliantly. In fact, if Odita ever does a grisaille series, I hope it comes to Houston.